Literary Southwest features poets Jane Hirshfield, Susan Terris

April is National Poetry Month and in commemoration, The Literary Southwest is featuring the poets Jane Hirshfield and Susan Terris on Friday, April 8, in the Yavapai College Library’s Susan N. Webb Community Room, 1100 E. Sheldon St., at 7 p.m. Following the reading will be an audience Q&A and book signing. Literary Southwest is free and open to the public.

Hirshfield has authored eight collections of poetry, according to a press release from Literary Southwest Director Jim Natal. These collections include the recent “The Beauty,” which was longlisted for the National Book Award, “Come, Thief, After,” which was on the short list for England’s T.S. Eliot Prize and named a “Best Book of 2006” by the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle and London Financial Times, “The Lives of the Heart,” “The October Palace,” and “Given Sugar, Given Salt,” which was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award. She has also written two books of essays entitled “Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World” and “Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry.”

“She has also edited and co-translated four books containing the work of poets from the past,” the release stated. “Hirshfield’s other honors include The Poetry Center Book Award; fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets; Columbia University’s Translation Center Award; and (both twice) The California Book Award and the Northern California Book Reviewers Award.”

Hirshfield also received the Donald Hall-Jane Kenyon Price in American Poetry in 2012 and the 70th Academy Fellowship for Distinguished Poetic Achievement by The Academy of American Poets in 2004, the release stated. Her work has appeared in such publications as “The New Yorker,” “The Times Literary Supplement,” “The Nation,” and “The American Poetry Review” and she has appeared on two Bill Moyers PBS television specials. Elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2012, Hirshfield has taught at University of California Berkeley, Duke University and Bennington College, the release stated.

As for Terris, she has authored six poetry collections, 15 chapbooks and three artist’s books. Her most recent books are “Ghost of Yesterday: New & Selected Poems” and “Memos.”

“She has also written 21 books for children and young adults published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Macmillan, Scholastic and Doubleday,” the release stated, also noting that her recent journal publications include “Denver Quarterly” and “Ploughshares.” “In recent years, she has won both the George Bogin Award and the Louis Hammer Award from the Poetry Society of America.”

Terris serves as the editor of Spillway Magazine, the release stated.

For more information on Hirshfield and Terris as well as Literary Southwest, visit www.yc.eduy/hassayampa or call Natal at 928-776-2035.